Would America benefit from a better educated workforce? Yes.
Is a better educated American workforce something Bill Gates supports? No. It was simply window dressing to distract America from the fact that Bill Gates would prefer to import lower wage workers from foreign nations than provide Americans with competitively paying jobs.
While I will not claim that Americans are smarter or better educated than their foreign counterparts, I will make the argument that Microsoft has benefited substantially from being based within America. I would go as far as to state that this nation created the environment within which Microsoft was able to grow and develop and succeed, and to reap the benefits of what this nation has provided you while attempting to give back to her citizens as little as possible is shameful.
Any American CEO who feels they owe the citizens of this nation nothing should feel free to relocate their entire business elsewhere. I am sure they will be successful, despite the regional instability, corruption, or outright resistance to capitalism they will find in many other nations.
It costs companies significantly more to hire a new employee than it costs to give a current employee a raise. Yet my experience has been similar to yours. It is usually more productive to change jobs than it is to receive a healthy raise from your current employer.
Why is this? I'm going to blame Human Resources for being inept, out of touch, and possibly just slightly jealous at the salaries commanded by those in the IT fields. If your HR department isn't normalizing pay scales between new hires and veterans, tracking local and national salary trends within the relevant career fields, competitively retaining your best employees, and breaking down the costs of new hires versus retaining current personnel, then you need to fire them. Or to put it another way, if HR isn't researching and defending raises for your top hires as vigorously as they research and defend their own raises... FIRE 'EM!
Companies themselves bear part of the burden however. The explosion of IT has also seen the rapid growth of many small to medium sized technology companies, mostly because many larger companies felt inept at managing their own programming departments. I've been on many interviews with small companies that seem to be centered on a cult of personality (the owner) who tries to sell you on the wonderful opportunity of working for their small company for a tiny sum of money. Promises of future raises and promotions and profit sharing are abundant, but overtime I expect these employees are mostly disappointed as their bosses only concern is growing their own bottom line.
The final part of the problem is the employees themselves. My advice is to get educated about your career field's salary expectations and just say "no" to small salaries accompanied with big promises and glowy joy-joy feelings. You simply drag everyone else in this career down when you settle for less.
In the 1980s I believed that "strong AI" was forthcoming...
In the 1980s, I was going through Stanford CS...
In the 1980s, I was watching Knight Rider and thinking we had already achieved AI.
By the 1990s, I was wondering if we really wanted to achieve AI. Isn't the ability to reason and think without the ability to empathize clinically defined as being psychotic? What exactly would we have on our hands if we truly achieved AI?
Or am I reading too much into the term AI? Does AI require the ability to be self aware, like say a human, or simply the ability to make decisions and learn, as say a dog?
I've been reading that most foreign countries do not use the word "evolution" in their biology texts at all! Can you believe it? Instead, they've been substituting words native to their own languages!!
THIS HAS TO STOP. The entire idea that a concept can be accurately represented by terms not used by the original author of a theory is dangerous, ludicrous, and dangerous. It has to be some sort of religious conspiracy!
It's a good thing we're scientists, or issues such as this might cause ordinary citizens to think we're reactionary and close-minded - just as we accuse those "religious" fanatics of being. Not that we would stereotype several hundred million people into a convenient caricature. We're scientists, after all. Our name has the word SCIENCE in it.
So people were able to do more, and yet the projects don't necessarily get completed faster. And this is supposedly an increase in productivity? I don't care if you look busier. I want the job DONE.
It does indicate that the workers involved were more connected and communicated far more. So it is possible that while the end project is completed in the same period of time, the increased communication leads to an end project of far superior quality or an end project that more closely meets the expectations of the originator(s) of the project.
Both worthwhile goals in my view.
The old adage is true. The talent goes where the money is - with one new caveat. In an economy such as ours, if the money is pretty good everywhere, then the talent goes where the working conditions are superb. In other words, corporate culture counts for a lot (just ask google). It enables you to recruit and then retain the most qualified applicants. Of course, that only works if there are actually qualified applicants for the available positions. But what if the talent pool simply isn't there?
For the answer to that, we have to probe a little deeper. The problem for computer science is that the corporate culture has been pretty universally acknowledged as being so poor for so long time that many qualified individuals are simply avoiding the career altogether. Twenty years of nightmare stories about the caffeine fueled all night programming push that leads into the 100 hour work week until program launch problem had a hand in that (the stories actually being true didn't help matters either). A constant bombardment of stories that convince an entire generation that there is no future in the computing because there will be no jobs for Americans in a few years hasn't helped either.
But I can tell you that if the money AND corporate culture were there, you would not have to convince students to pursue degrees that would find them employed at your company. They would beat a path through the CS department of their chosen university and right to your front door. What microsoft should be doing is revamping the image of programmers to be jobs where you work flexible and sane hours, and then convincing young students that there will be high paying jobs for them for many years to come.
It puzzles me how this fluff "review" made the front page. I can't be alone in thinking it's nothing more than an invitation to bitch about the candidate(s) you dislike under guise of critiquing his/her website. Can I?
Pretty much, except I don't think you actually have to critique one of the websites in question, you can just go straight to the political bickering.
Is it ok to show a commercial where junior plays with matches behind the garage, and winds up lighting the house on fire (cue the laughline)?
How about the one where junior sneaks into the movie theater and starts shouting "Fire!", then watches with amusement while all the adults flee the premises?
Because if you have children of your own, you realize that the most powerful form of learning for children is imitation. From a very young age when they literally learn how to syllabize by watching their parents mouth move as they speak and on into adulthood when they realize with a shock *gasp* that they've become their parents. It's where the saying "Do as I say and not as I do" comes from, because our natural inclination is to do the opposite, to do as we observe and not what we're told.
So let's look at the situation:
We have a form of media that cannot be planned for - even the most responsible parent in the world is not going to have an advance copy of the commercials that will be played during the broadcast they have deemed appropriate for their family to watch.
We potentially have children viewing it - whom we know learn from observation, and will tend to disregard what they are told (or cautioned about) to emulate what they have observed.
We have a commercial showing a child driving a car - without anything "bad" happening.
So please explain to me why you feel these parents were unjustified in their concerns. If you feel they were unjustified, then just where would YOU draw the line?
Anyone complaining about this actually have children?
I am constantly surprised by the number of Americans who have grown up and enjoyed the privileges, protections, and liberties of the wealthiest and most democratic society that humanity has ever seen, only to constantly complain about how bad they have it, how terrible their country is, and how oppressed they and their freedoms are.
To people throughout most of history, the inability to have an active voice in their government, and the strong possibility that they would be imprisoned or killed for voicing dissent with said government, was oppression.
To many Americans, seeking to discipline young people who attempt to belittle and humiliate their classmates with impunity shielded by the anonymity of the internet, is oppression.
If the one thing children learn from these laws is that freedom is not given, but must be earned (even if it was the previous generations that paid the price) and that therefore it demands a certain amount of vigilance from its benefactors to steward their freedoms in a responsible manner, instead of merely exploiting their freedoms for personal satisfaction, then all the better.
An interesting exercise is to lookup many of the "foundational" parenting books that were written in the 60's and 70's, and then reference how many of the authors actually had children. You'll find some interesting correlations between those without children and the advice being offered.
From my point of view, it is sort of like someone who has never smelled or tasted food writing their own cookbook. You may have some really wonderful theories about what you believe would make a appetizing meal, but without that first hand experience all you may really be serving up is a steaming pile of BS.
Or perhaps a better analogy would be showing up at the hospital to get your tonsils removed, and being met by someone who says, "I'm a medical student. I don't have any actual medical experience, but I've read some good books about it, and spent alot of time thinking about it. Also I had my tonsils out years ago and have been pondering a better way to do it ever since! I'll be flying solo on this surgery, so wish me luck. Ready for your pre-op?". Yeah. Good luck with that.
I have no understanding of where this irrational fear of government comes form. Our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. It's not a dictatorship, and it's certainly not a police state.
It works hard to strike a fair balance between the rights of individuals and the security of the nation as a whole. While not perfect, for the vast majority of her 200 million citizens, it works. Whatever they are complaining about, the simple truth is that most Americans lead comfortable lives, with good prospects of education and employment (if one is willing to work hard). The vast majority have never seen war, nor starvation, nor privation. Nor are they likely to.
I guess those are easy circumstances under which to stand up, raise your voice, and complain, neh?
So while not a perfect system, it may be as close to perfect as humanity is capable of coming at this point in time. Say what you want, but I feel incredibly blessed to live in America. Despite her difficulties, I believe her citizens are some of the luckiest to ever draw breath on planet earth.
Of course, you're Canadian, so you know all of this already. You're one of the lucky "North Americans" as well.
While making some valid points, you fail to recognize that the foundation our economic stability is built on is being eroded by the multinational conglomerates you claim are doing the damage, but not for the reasons you think. The damage comes from people who are willing to take minimum wage jobs and then try to hold on to them for 20, 30 or 40 years. America wasn't built and isn't stabilized by the 'economic elite', it was built and IS stabilized by disruptive players and hard work [if you've had the same job for 40 years... you're not working hard or smart]. We all know that the technology industry, the MULTI-BILLION dollar technology industry was sparked, built and expanded by relatively unknown players with big dreams - like Steve Jobs. If you have a bachelors in Computer Science, why would you condemn yourself to 20 years of programming? Why not build your own company with your own big ideas? When Americans stop dreaming, building, or doing, we'll collapse. That will happen regardless of who has the money.
Twenty years ago, the manufacturing industry was told it was their own fault their jobs were being outsourced, because they should have gone to college and gotten a technical degree. So an entire segment of the American job market was eroded. Today the technical people are being told the outsourcing is their own fault, they should have gone to college and become managers, and another segment of our job market is being eroded.
What happens in twenty more years, when the technical job force in other countries has matured, and they realize they can save even more money by outsourcing management as well? We'll all be told we should have become part of the "investor class", who doesn't actually work or produce anything themselves, but will live very well off of the hard work of the people of India. Meanwhile, there won't actually be any jobs left in America to have.
My point here is that the greed fueled far right of the economic perspective is just as dangerous to the hardworking, innovative, dynamic workers of our nation as the far left communist perspective is.
If I honestly believed that the outsourcing we are seeing is being fueled by genuine industry growth and a lack of skilled workforce here at home then I would be all for it. But I believe it stems from the mindset of greed that has gripped the leadership of this nation at all levels. We witness it when a CEO is unwilling to commit to pay raises for their workers that will merely keep up with inflation (in the name of protecting investors) yet put their hypocrisy on display when they write clauses into their contract to depart the company with hundreds of millions of dollars if they are fired for poor performance. Not so interested in protecting the investors from themselves, where they.
The economic growth of the United States is due, in no small part, to our national stability over the past two centuries. Both domestically, regionally, and internationally. There has not been a war on our soil in a century, and at it's worst the civil unrest of the past half century has been pretty much non-violent.
Contrast that with what we saw in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Outrage, panic, looting. Essentially the entire social structure quickly broke down. Now imagine the economic impact that such a breakdown would create on a national scale. How would a company continue to function and remain profitable under such conditions? Answer: they wouldn't.
You see, there are a whole host of factors that contribute to the economic growth of industries in the U.S., and very few of them are related to the investors and executives who reap the largest profits. There are our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who protect our international stability. Our national guard, homeland security, and fbi who protect our domestic stability. And finally our policemen and firefighters who protect our regional stability. Then there are the school teachers and educators who help educate generation after generation. I can go on and on.
So what happens when this entire system breaks down? You have young soldiers putting their lives at risk... for what? So they can sacrifice a limb and return home to the minimum wage jobs that the economic elite have reserved for them? Let's say they have some initiative and put their GIBill to good use and attend college for 4 years to get a Bachelors in Computer Science... only to have most of the entry level programming jobs outsourced. Now what? Retrain you say? Studies indicate that those retraining tend to earn a fraction of what they would have earned in their original career.
These changes may have a cascading effect on our economy, and as those who would provide our national stability opt out of our entire national vision, you can bet it will have serious effects on our economy. Any executive who thinks otherwise is simply focusing too much on the immediate to see the America they are shaping for their children and grandchildren.
I remember awhile back reading an article about how IBM was opening a new center in India and "creating" 1000 new jobs, and IN A COMPLETELY UNRELATED MOVE closing a center in the U.S., where they would be cutting 1000 jobs.
The report did correctly state at least one factor in outsourcing: "Seventy-three percent of respondents report a positive impact on profits".
In my experience, the only thing worse than an applicant who overrates their technical abilities is an interviewer who over estimates their interviewing abilities. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen applicants just barely get the nod from the interviewer(s), only to later demonstrate that they are amazing programmers. I won't even try to guess how many times I've seen the exact opposite happen (someone aces the interview, but later proves to be incompetent).
I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because in our culture, we're looking for the guy who prefers talking about technology (and looks good doing that) to actually doing something technical. It's why I remarked after graduation that I should have majored in resume writing and minored in computer science - I could have gotten twice the job with half the technical expertise.
To be sure, approving the right candidates through the interviewing process is one of the toughest jobs that exists, and for some reason it's one that nearly everyone feels they will be good at. So the next time you're certain that the candidate sitting in front of you is incompetent at their job, stop a second and make sure they're not just incompetent at talking to strangers about their job. Because there is a difference.
You would think it was possible to put our nations academic institutions into the patent review loop.
Company applies for patent, patent judge receives comments from university departments focused on that type of technology, judge reviews comments to verify if this is a revolutionary new idea worth granting a patent to or not.
I also liked the suggestion that the cost of patenting scale up the more patents one files within a given timeframe. This should keep a company from essentially conducting a "denial of patent review" attack by filing so many similar patents that the academics will simply give up participating in the system.
I would also like to see some sort of financial pentalty applied to corporations who attempt to patent existing work. In this case, if the court finds the patent should never have been granted, I would accompany the dismissal of their lawsuit with a hefty fine. Force companies to conduct solid research instead of just filing some paperwork and seeing what they can slip through the system.
I'm having difficutly grasping the argument that observation in public places somehow erodes an individual's liberties.
While everyone seems to agree that there is no inherent constitutional protection from observation while in public places (thankfully, else we would all be forced to go about blindfolded, led by seeing eye dogs), there does seem to be an inherent fear associated with the convergance of emerging technologies and government observation.
Why is this? No one seemed overly concerned, for example, that they could be observed by police officers while in public. This seems to be accepted as necessary to a functioning society.
I suspect there would also not be much concern if citizens were assured (just accept it as an absolute certainty for the sake of the argument) that the video footage would never be viewed, by human or machine. One billion video cameras viewing every square inch of the American public, but if the cameras were on a closed loop with no one viewing the monitors and no recordings being made, I suspect most citizens would be unconcerned.
Now I realize the argument was made that even the existance of such a camera system (monitored or not) could prove dangerous if a government turned against her citizens, but I'm willing to dismiss this concern, because nothing would stop said government from quickly constructing such a monitoring system upon seizing power. Besides, entertaining such arguments would quickly lead us to an absurd society. The same argument could, after all, be used to dismantle all of our national and regional infrastructure (i.e. in the event of a coup, the military could be used against our citizens, so therefore we must dismantle it).
So with the extremes of the argument being discarded, we're left with only unreasonable fears about technology and government and some elementary privacy concerns that reasonable safeguards could protect. Allow the government to record what they want in public, but require a warrant to view said footage.
In the case of a murder on the street, a warrant could be issued to view the relevant footage, and further footage could then be unsealed as the murderer was tracked throughout the city. What "liberties" have been sacrificed under such a system?
The liberty to remain entirely unobserved throughout the course of my lifetime? Sorry, but such a liberty doesn't exist in a society. The liberty to get away with a crime so long as no one was there in person to catch me? Please....
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Would America benefit from a better educated workforce? Yes. Is a better educated American workforce something Bill Gates supports? No. It was simply window dressing to distract America from the fact that Bill Gates would prefer to import lower wage workers from foreign nations than provide Americans with competitively paying jobs. While I will not claim that Americans are smarter or better educated than their foreign counterparts, I will make the argument that Microsoft has benefited substantially from being based within America. I would go as far as to state that this nation created the environment within which Microsoft was able to grow and develop and succeed, and to reap the benefits of what this nation has provided you while attempting to give back to her citizens as little as possible is shameful. Any American CEO who feels they owe the citizens of this nation nothing should feel free to relocate their entire business elsewhere. I am sure they will be successful, despite the regional instability, corruption, or outright resistance to capitalism they will find in many other nations.
It's the simple truth.
It costs companies significantly more to hire a new employee than it costs to give a current employee a raise. Yet my experience has been similar to yours. It is usually more productive to change jobs than it is to receive a healthy raise from your current employer.
Why is this? I'm going to blame Human Resources for being inept, out of touch, and possibly just slightly jealous at the salaries commanded by those in the IT fields. If your HR department isn't normalizing pay scales between new hires and veterans, tracking local and national salary trends within the relevant career fields, competitively retaining your best employees, and breaking down the costs of new hires versus retaining current personnel, then you need to fire them. Or to put it another way, if HR isn't researching and defending raises for your top hires as vigorously as they research and defend their own raises... FIRE 'EM!
Companies themselves bear part of the burden however. The explosion of IT has also seen the rapid growth of many small to medium sized technology companies, mostly because many larger companies felt inept at managing their own programming departments. I've been on many interviews with small companies that seem to be centered on a cult of personality (the owner) who tries to sell you on the wonderful opportunity of working for their small company for a tiny sum of money. Promises of future raises and promotions and profit sharing are abundant, but overtime I expect these employees are mostly disappointed as their bosses only concern is growing their own bottom line.
The final part of the problem is the employees themselves. My advice is to get educated about your career field's salary expectations and just say "no" to small salaries accompanied with big promises and glowy joy-joy feelings. You simply drag everyone else in this career down when you settle for less.
By the 1990s, I was wondering if we really wanted to achieve AI. Isn't the ability to reason and think without the ability to empathize clinically defined as being psychotic? What exactly would we have on our hands if we truly achieved AI?
Or am I reading too much into the term AI? Does AI require the ability to be self aware, like say a human, or simply the ability to make decisions and learn, as say a dog?
I've been reading that most foreign countries do not use the word "evolution" in their biology texts at all! Can you believe it? Instead, they've been substituting words native to their own languages!!
THIS HAS TO STOP. The entire idea that a concept can be accurately represented by terms not used by the original author of a theory is dangerous, ludicrous, and dangerous. It has to be some sort of religious conspiracy!
It's a good thing we're scientists, or issues such as this might cause ordinary citizens to think we're reactionary and close-minded - just as we accuse those "religious" fanatics of being. Not that we would stereotype several hundred million people into a convenient caricature. We're scientists, after all. Our name has the word SCIENCE in it.
It does indicate that the workers involved were more connected and communicated far more. So it is possible that while the end project is completed in the same period of time, the increased communication leads to an end project of far superior quality or an end project that more closely meets the expectations of the originator(s) of the project. Both worthwhile goals in my view.
The old adage is true. The talent goes where the money is - with one new caveat. In an economy such as ours, if the money is pretty good everywhere, then the talent goes where the working conditions are superb. In other words, corporate culture counts for a lot (just ask google). It enables you to recruit and then retain the most qualified applicants. Of course, that only works if there are actually qualified applicants for the available positions. But what if the talent pool simply isn't there? For the answer to that, we have to probe a little deeper. The problem for computer science is that the corporate culture has been pretty universally acknowledged as being so poor for so long time that many qualified individuals are simply avoiding the career altogether. Twenty years of nightmare stories about the caffeine fueled all night programming push that leads into the 100 hour work week until program launch problem had a hand in that (the stories actually being true didn't help matters either). A constant bombardment of stories that convince an entire generation that there is no future in the computing because there will be no jobs for Americans in a few years hasn't helped either. But I can tell you that if the money AND corporate culture were there, you would not have to convince students to pursue degrees that would find them employed at your company. They would beat a path through the CS department of their chosen university and right to your front door. What microsoft should be doing is revamping the image of programmers to be jobs where you work flexible and sane hours, and then convincing young students that there will be high paying jobs for them for many years to come.
Pretty much, except I don't think you actually have to critique one of the websites in question, you can just go straight to the political bickering.
So where would YOU draw the line?
Is it ok to show a commercial where junior plays with matches behind the garage, and winds up lighting the house on fire (cue the laughline)?
How about the one where junior sneaks into the movie theater and starts shouting "Fire!", then watches with amusement while all the adults flee the premises?
Because if you have children of your own, you realize that the most powerful form of learning for children is imitation. From a very young age when they literally learn how to syllabize by watching their parents mouth move as they speak and on into adulthood when they realize with a shock *gasp* that they've become their parents. It's where the saying "Do as I say and not as I do" comes from, because our natural inclination is to do the opposite, to do as we observe and not what we're told.
So let's look at the situation:
We have a form of media that cannot be planned for - even the most responsible parent in the world is not going to have an advance copy of the commercials that will be played during the broadcast they have deemed appropriate for their family to watch.
We potentially have children viewing it - whom we know learn from observation, and will tend to disregard what they are told (or cautioned about) to emulate what they have observed.
We have a commercial showing a child driving a car - without anything "bad" happening.
So please explain to me why you feel these parents were unjustified in their concerns. If you feel they were unjustified, then just where would YOU draw the line?
Anyone complaining about this actually have children?
I am constantly surprised by the number of Americans who have grown up and enjoyed the privileges, protections, and liberties of the wealthiest and most democratic society that humanity has ever seen, only to constantly complain about how bad they have it, how terrible their country is, and how oppressed they and their freedoms are.
To people throughout most of history, the inability to have an active voice in their government, and the strong possibility that they would be imprisoned or killed for voicing dissent with said government, was oppression.
To many Americans, seeking to discipline young people who attempt to belittle and humiliate their classmates with impunity shielded by the anonymity of the internet, is oppression.
If the one thing children learn from these laws is that freedom is not given, but must be earned (even if it was the previous generations that paid the price) and that therefore it demands a certain amount of vigilance from its benefactors to steward their freedoms in a responsible manner, instead of merely exploiting their freedoms for personal satisfaction, then all the better.
An interesting exercise is to lookup many of the "foundational" parenting books that were written in the 60's and 70's, and then reference how many of the authors actually had children. You'll find some interesting correlations between those without children and the advice being offered.
From my point of view, it is sort of like someone who has never smelled or tasted food writing their own cookbook. You may have some really wonderful theories about what you believe would make a appetizing meal, but without that first hand experience all you may really be serving up is a steaming pile of BS.
Or perhaps a better analogy would be showing up at the hospital to get your tonsils removed, and being met by someone who says, "I'm a medical student. I don't have any actual medical experience, but I've read some good books about it, and spent alot of time thinking about it. Also I had my tonsils out years ago and have been pondering a better way to do it ever since! I'll be flying solo on this surgery, so wish me luck. Ready for your pre-op?". Yeah. Good luck with that.
I have no understanding of where this irrational fear of government comes form. Our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. It's not a dictatorship, and it's certainly not a police state.
It works hard to strike a fair balance between the rights of individuals and the security of the nation as a whole. While not perfect, for the vast majority of her 200 million citizens, it works. Whatever they are complaining about, the simple truth is that most Americans lead comfortable lives, with good prospects of education and employment (if one is willing to work hard). The vast majority have never seen war, nor starvation, nor privation. Nor are they likely to.
I guess those are easy circumstances under which to stand up, raise your voice, and complain, neh?
So while not a perfect system, it may be as close to perfect as humanity is capable of coming at this point in time. Say what you want, but I feel incredibly blessed to live in America. Despite her difficulties, I believe her citizens are some of the luckiest to ever draw breath on planet earth.
Of course, you're Canadian, so you know all of this already. You're one of the lucky "North Americans" as well.
Twenty years ago, the manufacturing industry was told it was their own fault their jobs were being outsourced, because they should have gone to college and gotten a technical degree. So an entire segment of the American job market was eroded. Today the technical people are being told the outsourcing is their own fault, they should have gone to college and become managers, and another segment of our job market is being eroded.
What happens in twenty more years, when the technical job force in other countries has matured, and they realize they can save even more money by outsourcing management as well? We'll all be told we should have become part of the "investor class", who doesn't actually work or produce anything themselves, but will live very well off of the hard work of the people of India. Meanwhile, there won't actually be any jobs left in America to have.
My point here is that the greed fueled far right of the economic perspective is just as dangerous to the hardworking, innovative, dynamic workers of our nation as the far left communist perspective is.
If I honestly believed that the outsourcing we are seeing is being fueled by genuine industry growth and a lack of skilled workforce here at home then I would be all for it. But I believe it stems from the mindset of greed that has gripped the leadership of this nation at all levels. We witness it when a CEO is unwilling to commit to pay raises for their workers that will merely keep up with inflation (in the name of protecting investors) yet put their hypocrisy on display when they write clauses into their contract to depart the company with hundreds of millions of dollars if they are fired for poor performance. Not so interested in protecting the investors from themselves, where they.
The economic growth of the United States is due, in no small part, to our national stability over the past two centuries. Both domestically, regionally, and internationally. There has not been a war on our soil in a century, and at it's worst the civil unrest of the past half century has been pretty much non-violent.
Contrast that with what we saw in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Outrage, panic, looting. Essentially the entire social structure quickly broke down. Now imagine the economic impact that such a breakdown would create on a national scale. How would a company continue to function and remain profitable under such conditions? Answer: they wouldn't.
You see, there are a whole host of factors that contribute to the economic growth of industries in the U.S., and very few of them are related to the investors and executives who reap the largest profits. There are our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who protect our international stability. Our national guard, homeland security, and fbi who protect our domestic stability. And finally our policemen and firefighters who protect our regional stability. Then there are the school teachers and educators who help educate generation after generation. I can go on and on.
So what happens when this entire system breaks down? You have young soldiers putting their lives at risk... for what? So they can sacrifice a limb and return home to the minimum wage jobs that the economic elite have reserved for them? Let's say they have some initiative and put their GIBill to good use and attend college for 4 years to get a Bachelors in Computer Science... only to have most of the entry level programming jobs outsourced. Now what? Retrain you say? Studies indicate that those retraining tend to earn a fraction of what they would have earned in their original career.
These changes may have a cascading effect on our economy, and as those who would provide our national stability opt out of our entire national vision, you can bet it will have serious effects on our economy. Any executive who thinks otherwise is simply focusing too much on the immediate to see the America they are shaping for their children and grandchildren.
I remember awhile back reading an article about how IBM was opening a new center in India and "creating" 1000 new jobs, and IN A COMPLETELY UNRELATED MOVE closing a center in the U.S., where they would be cutting 1000 jobs.
The report did correctly state at least one factor in outsourcing: "Seventy-three percent of respondents report a positive impact on profits".
In my experience, the only thing worse than an applicant who overrates their technical abilities is an interviewer who over estimates their interviewing abilities. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen applicants just barely get the nod from the interviewer(s), only to later demonstrate that they are amazing programmers. I won't even try to guess how many times I've seen the exact opposite happen (someone aces the interview, but later proves to be incompetent).
I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because in our culture, we're looking for the guy who prefers talking about technology (and looks good doing that) to actually doing something technical. It's why I remarked after graduation that I should have majored in resume writing and minored in computer science - I could have gotten twice the job with half the technical expertise.
To be sure, approving the right candidates through the interviewing process is one of the toughest jobs that exists, and for some reason it's one that nearly everyone feels they will be good at. So the next time you're certain that the candidate sitting in front of you is incompetent at their job, stop a second and make sure they're not just incompetent at talking to strangers about their job. Because there is a difference.
You would think it was possible to put our nations academic institutions into the patent review loop.
Company applies for patent, patent judge receives comments from university departments focused on that type of technology, judge reviews comments to verify if this is a revolutionary new idea worth granting a patent to or not.
I also liked the suggestion that the cost of patenting scale up the more patents one files within a given timeframe. This should keep a company from essentially conducting a "denial of patent review" attack by filing so many similar patents that the academics will simply give up participating in the system.
I would also like to see some sort of financial pentalty applied to corporations who attempt to patent existing work. In this case, if the court finds the patent should never have been granted, I would accompany the dismissal of their lawsuit with a hefty fine. Force companies to conduct solid research instead of just filing some paperwork and seeing what they can slip through the system.
I'm having difficutly grasping the argument that observation in public places somehow erodes an individual's liberties.
While everyone seems to agree that there is no inherent constitutional protection from observation while in public places (thankfully, else we would all be forced to go about blindfolded, led by seeing eye dogs), there does seem to be an inherent fear associated with the convergance of emerging technologies and government observation.
Why is this? No one seemed overly concerned, for example, that they could be observed by police officers while in public. This seems to be accepted as necessary to a functioning society.
I suspect there would also not be much concern if citizens were assured (just accept it as an absolute certainty for the sake of the argument) that the video footage would never be viewed, by human or machine. One billion video cameras viewing every square inch of the American public, but if the cameras were on a closed loop with no one viewing the monitors and no recordings being made, I suspect most citizens would be unconcerned.
Now I realize the argument was made that even the existance of such a camera system (monitored or not) could prove dangerous if a government turned against her citizens, but I'm willing to dismiss this concern, because nothing would stop said government from quickly constructing such a monitoring system upon seizing power. Besides, entertaining such arguments would quickly lead us to an absurd society. The same argument could, after all, be used to dismantle all of our national and regional infrastructure (i.e. in the event of a coup, the military could be used against our citizens, so therefore we must dismantle it).
So with the extremes of the argument being discarded, we're left with only unreasonable fears about technology and government and some elementary privacy concerns that reasonable safeguards could protect. Allow the government to record what they want in public, but require a warrant to view said footage.
In the case of a murder on the street, a warrant could be issued to view the relevant footage, and further footage could then be unsealed as the murderer was tracked throughout the city. What "liberties" have been sacrificed under such a system?
The liberty to remain entirely unobserved throughout the course of my lifetime? Sorry, but such a liberty doesn't exist in a society. The liberty to get away with a crime so long as no one was there in person to catch me? Please....